East Kentucky Times

The majority of students in Breathitt County schools were white in the 2022-23 school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Of the 2,497 students attending Breathitt County schools, 94.5% were white. African American students were the second most represented ethnicity, making up 3.2%.

In the previous school year, white students were also the most common group in Breathitt County schools, representing 95.3% of the student body.

Breathitt Regional School and Breathitt County High School had the most diverse student body in the county, which included African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Hispanic or Latino, multiracial, white, and Asian.

In the 2022-23 school year, the total number of students enrolled in schools in the county dropped to 3.4% compared to the previous year.

Despite escaping some of the pandemic's educational disruptions, Kentucky's achievement gaps have remained an issue since 2019. In the eighth-grade reading assessments, for example, Hispanic students scored eight points lower than their white peers, and the gap reached 15 points in math. Black students fared even worse, falling more than 20 points behind and facing a failure rate nearly double that of their white counterparts.

School	Most Prevalent	Percent of Total Student Body	Total Enrollment
Sebastian Elementary School	White	98.9%	626
Breathitt County High School	White	98.2%	561
Jackson City School	White	98.2%	383
Marie Roberts-Caney Elementary School	White	96.8%	314
Breathitt Regional School	White	83.5%	284
Highland-Turner Elementary School	White	97.2%	252
Breathitt County Day Treatment	African American	49.4%	77